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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 





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Zhe Ibealino of Disease 





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PRAYER 



AND 



THE HEALING OF DISEASE 



BY 



REV. W. S. PLU.WER BRYAN, D.D. 






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Chicago: 

FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY. 

1896 



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Copyrighted iSgb by 
AY:. ir. A". Plumur Bryan, P.P. 



Preface. 

A recent series of studies of the Christian 
doctrine of prayer included these special 
themes: 

The Prayer-Hearer. 

Unanswered Prayer. 

The Praying Son and the Model Prayer. 

Prayer and the Healing of Disease. 

The Triumphs of Prayer. 

The following pages contain the fourth of 
these studies. It is submitted to the Christian 
public because of the deep solicitude awak- 
ened in many of our churches and commu- 
nities by the loud claims to supernatural power 
put forth by men who cast themselves athwart 
the faith of the Church Universal. How deep 
that solicitude is will be appreciated in every 
circle in which one of these claimants has suc- 
ceeded in attracting attention to himself; how 
groundless it is, I have endeavored in these 
pages to show. 



6 PREFACE 

Some of the most palpable omissa are dealt 
with in the unpublished studies; but some are 
left untouched altogether. The sacrifice of 
completeness has been made upon the altar of 
conciseness. The reader must judge whether 
the altar justifies the sacrifice. 
The Church of the Covenant, 

Chicago, March, i8q6. 



CONTENTS. 

Page. 

The Cure of Hezekiah ii 

Modern Claimants of Healing Power - 20 

Points of Likeness Among These Claimants 29 

The Explanation of Their Cures - 36 

Really Miraculous Cures 45 

The Effect of False Claims - - 50 



In those days was Hezckiah sick unto death. And the 
prophet Isaiah, the son of Amoz, came to him, and said 
unto him, Thus saitJi the lord, Set thine house in order; 
for thou sha/t die and not live. Then he turned his face 
to the wall, and prayed unto the lord, saying: /be- 
seech Thee, Lord, remember now how I have walked 
before Thee in truth and with a pert ret heart, and /. 
done that which is good in Thy sight And Ifezekiah 
wept sore. And it came to pass, afore Isaiah was gone 
out into the middle court, that the word oft 
to him, saying: Turn again, and tell Hezckiah, the 
captain of My people, Thus sailh the lord, the God of 
David, thy father, I have heard thy prayer, I / 
thy tears: behold I will heal thee: on the third day thou 
shall go up into the house of the Lord. And 1 will add 
unto thy days fifteen years; and I will del: a fid 

this city out of the hand of the king oj t; and I 

will defend this city for mine own sake, and for my 
servant David's sake. And Isaiah said: Take a lump 
of figs. And they took and laid it on the boil, and he 
recovered. II. Kings, xx: 1-7. 



prayer anb tfye pealing of 
Disease. 

Hezekiah, the king of Judah, in the times 
of Isaiah the prophet, was a man of prayer, 
and his prayers were not for himself alone, 
but for the people over whom he ruled. 
He was also a man of action with a serious 
view of life, and it was the great desire of his 
heart to carry out certain plans for the relief 
of his people and for the honor of God. But 
he was also a man subject to physical infirm- 
ity. At the age of thirty, when he had no 
heir to leave upon his throne and his work of 
reform was scarcely begun, he was taken 
sick. A carbuncle or imposthume began to 
form and with it came a message from God 
through Isaiah, " Set thine house in order, for 
thou shalt die and not live." 

We who live in the bright light of Christian 
immortality would be depressed by such a warn- 
ing coming at such a time, and we can under- 
stand why Hezekiah turned his face to the 



10 PR A YER 

wall and wept sore, praying that his life be 
spared. His prayer reached the ear of God 
and Isaiah brought him the answer: " I have 
heard thy prayer; I have seen thy tears; be- 
hold, I will add unto thy days fifteen years." 
At Isaiah's command, the attendants took a 
cake of figs and laid it upon the boil, and 
Hezekiah recovered; and his psalm of thanks- 
giving is recorded at length in these pro- 
phecies of Isaiah. 



Cfyc Cure of Ijc-cktai}. 

This is but one instance among many re- 
ported in Scripture of the efficacy of prayer in 
the healing of disease; and it illustrates the 
well-nigh universal faith of Christian people 
upon this subject. In that faith they hold: 



First, that God hears prayers for healing as 
for other blessings. One of his names is Jeho- 
vah-Rophi — the Lord our Healer, and the heal- 
ing is not merely spiritual but includes the body, 
which is the temple of the Holy Ghost. The 
Prayer-Hearer listens to every item in that long 
catalogue of wants which His people pour con- 
tinually into His ear. That ear catches the 
petition for deliverance from pain as quickly as 
the petition for deliverance from sin. When 
the Praying Son taught us to pray " Give us 
this day our daily bread," He must have 
intended us to include the body into which that 



12 PRA YER 

bread is to be received, for what good would 
bread do to one whose physical condition was 
such that he could not eat ? We ought there- 
fore to pray, Give us our health day by day. 
He who gives us the bread gives also the 
health, each in its own measure and according 
to His holy will. He who has power over the 
earth that it may bring forth seed to the sower 
and bread to the eater, has power also over the 
body and its ailments and infirmities. Every 
age of the Church, both before the time of 
Hezekiah and after, both in the days of Christ 
and up to the present day, has been full of 
instances in which God has heard prayer and 
has raised up His children from the verge of the 
grave. Thousands are living to-day in answer 
to prayer, and thousands more are full of grati- 
tude to the prayer-hearing God who has heard 
their prayers for the life and health of those 
dear to them. To all such it is passing strange 
that one can doubt this precious truth, and they 
are filled with amazement when they are 
themselves reproached with unbelief in it, 
because they refuse credence to some passing 
claimant of divine authority and supernatural 
power. Yet for the sake of others it is need- 



THE CURE OF HEZEKIAH 13 

ful that we confess our faith anew in this 
fundamental truth and examine soberly in the 
light of Scripture the claims of these who, from 
their different standpoints, assail the faith of 
the Church. 



Second, that God's answers to prayers for 
healing ordinarily come, as His answers for 
other blessings ordinarily do, through the nat- 
ural order. He is not bound down to means. 
He could have healed Hezekiah by a word 
without the medicinal agency of the lump of 
figs, even as He has healed many others by the 
naked exercise of divine power. But what 
God can do is some times a different question 
from what He does. In the case of Hezekiah, 
God put His blessing upon the established 
remedial agency of the time, a lump of figs, 
which hastened the rising of the swelling and 
thus brought the process of mattering to its 
conclusion. Under God's blessing upon this 
remedy the royal patient recovered. This 
remedy, so effective in Hezekiah's case, was 
recognized by medical authorities in the times 



14 PR A YER 

of Dioscorides, Pliny and St. Jerome, and it is 
highly esteemed by medical authorities to-day. 
The divine method in the case of Hezekiah 
showed not only that God works through 
means, but also that He uses the means which 
are at hand in the provisions of nature, and as 
the result of human experiment. Naaman the 
Syrian, and the man born blind in the days of 
Christ, are both instances of God's blessing 
upon means. Naaman was only healed of his 
leprosy when, at the command of Elisha, he 
washed in the river Jordan seven times. The 
man born blind only began to see after his e\ 
had been anointed by Jesus with clay made of 
spittle and he had washed in the Pool of Si- 
loam. But in neither of these cases was a rec- 
ognized remedial agency used, so that the cure 
of Hezekiah stands forth as reflecting the di- 
vine blessing upon those medicinal prepara- 
tions which experience has shown to be effective. 
It is not disbelief, therefore, to use these prepa- 
rations. It is rather sinful presumption to re- 
fuse or to neglect them. One might as well re- 
fuse to eat, expecting that God would miracu- 
lously sustain his life ; or to study, expecting that 
God would miraculously endow him with learn- 



THE CURE OF HEZEKIAH 15 

ing; or to work and to save, expecting that God 
would miraculously endow him with wealth, 
as refuse the means appointed for the main- 
tenance and recovery of health, expecting that 
God will honor our daring presumption in 
defying that order of nature which His own 
wisdom has appointed. 



Third, that Hezekiah's recovery shows that 
health is not the highest blessing which man 
can have. In his case, recovery was most 
unfortunate; for the moral catastrophe of 
his life occurred after it and largely in con- 
sequence of it. Had he died when the sum- 
mons was sent him first, his record as a sin- 
cere and consistent servant of God so far 
as we have it would have been unblem- 
ished; but during the fifteen years which, 
in answer to prayer, God had added to his 
life, his heart was lifted up in pride and 
self-glory. He entered into alliance with 
Merodach-baladan, king of Babylon, and re- 
ceived his presents and rendered not unto God 
for the benefits which God had done him. His 



10 PRAYER 

sin brought its doom in the captivity of his 
people, and there was wrath upon him and 
upon Judah and upon Jerusalem. Though the 
captivity was postponed until after his death, 
yet death to him must have been bitter indeed, 
for it was clouded with the consciousness that 
his own pride had brought ruin upon the peo- 
ple whom he loved and whom he sought to 
serve. 

Sickness and death in the Christian view are 
not the greatest evils one can undergo. Out 
of them have come some of God's richest 
blessings. The man that was born blind, 
through no sin of his own nor through any sin 
of his parents, could look back, after he had 
been healed, upon his years of darkness with 
rejoicing, and see wherein by his darkness 
God had been glorified. The man who had 
an infirmity for thirty-eight years, and who year 
after year lay at the pool of Bethesda, hoping in 
vain that he might reach the pool, could look 
back upon those thirty-eight weary years with- 
out regret after he had been given sight by the 
Lord Jesus. Lazarus, when dying, doubtless 
felt grieved, as his sisters certainly did, that 
his Friend and Lord had not come to save 



THE CURE OF HEZEKIAH 17 

him from the bitterness of death. And yet 
when after four days that Lord raised him 
from the dead, how glad they were that 
He and not they had ordered the issue of the 
sickness ! They saw then that the glory of 
God shines even through death. Paul's thorn 
in the flesh, which probably was some physical 
infirmity, called forth from him three earnest 
prayers for relief, none of which were an- 
swered; but that thorn became a blessing, 
even while it rankled, in that it brought with 
it the promise, " My grace is sufficient for thee, 
for my strength is made perfect in weakness." 
And the reverent reply of the sorely-afflicted 
apostle separates him from the modern claim- 
ants to supernatural power in the healing of 
disease, for, instead of making a clamorous de- 
mand that the thorn be removed, he patiently 
submitted to the divine will and said, " Most 
gladly, therefore, will I rather glory in my 
infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest 
upon me." The power of Christ ! this was 
his great desire and the thorn that brought it 
was a blessing in disguise. 

The Christian life is something more than 
physical health. Prayer has a higher and 



18 PRAYER 

nobler purpose than mere freedom from pain. 
Some of the brightest lights in the kingdom of 
God have for years been never free from pain. 
Their prayers for health, like Paul's, have not 
been answered; but God has given them some- 
thing better than physical health, and they 
have been willing patiently to submit to 1 1 is 
will. Sickness is not a mark of the divine 
displeasure. Death to the Christian is not a 
bugbear. The grave has been entered by One 
who as He lay in it spoiled its victory. He 
has made it the entrance-way to the heavenly 
home and the eternal glory. These comfort- 
ing truths are in marked contrast with the 
teachings of some who assume to speak by di- 
vine authority, and they show how far astray 
these teachers are. To the sick and the dying 
and the bereaved the Scripture comes sooth- 
ingly. The anguish and horror occasioned by 
these claimants to divine authority prove that 
they are not sent by Him who does not break 
the bruised reed nor quench the smoking flax. 

These features of the cure of Hezekiah 
illustrate the Christian doctrine of prayer in its 



THE CURE OF HEZEKIAH 19 

relation to health. It expresses the faith of 
thousands of Christians who act upon it year 
after year, without ever questioning it. These 
are of many names and of various creeds, but 
they are all at one in their faith in the God 
who hears prayers for health as for all other 
blessings 



Cfye Claimants to Supernatural power. 

The cure of Hezekiah is very unsatisfactory 
to different classes of men. There are those 
who do not believe in a personal God, or in 
the power of prayer; and for these reas 
they reject the cure. There are others who 
believe in prayer for some things, but not for 
such a definite thing as health; and they also 
reject the cure. There are others who be- 
lieve that God can do some things, but that 
the miraculous sign given from heaven to con- 
firm this cure is too heavy a strain upon their 
faith; and they also reject the cure. 

Our concern is with none of these, but with 
another class, many of whom believe in God 
and in His power and in the Holy Scripture; 
yet who find the cure of Hezekiah by the lump 
of figs a fact very damaging to their favorite 
theories. This class has very serious internal 
differences, but it is a class nevertheless. 
The various types all hold the belief that 



CLAIMS OF SUPERNATURAL POWER 21 

physical health is always and everywhere 
God's will for us and that it is to be procured 
and maintained not by the use of reme- 
dial agencies but by various devices. As to 
what these devices are, they are in violent an- 
tagonism among themselves; but they all alike 
endeavor to perform cures by flouting the 
natural remedies and claiming a power and au- 
thority more or less supernatural. 

This class is not confined to any one sec- 
tion nor yet to any one religion of the woHd. 
It appears, however, to thrive under the ample 
folds of the name of Christianity and in 
Christian countries its representatives claim 
the sanction of the religion of Jesus for their 
practices. The Mormons who call themselves 
the Latter-Day Saints in the seventh of their 
articles of faith claim the gift of healing, and 
their success in gathering converts is in part 
due to the exercise of this gift. Among the 
Roman Catholics holy persons and holy places 
are supposed to be able to work wonderful 
cures. Prince Hohenlohe, bishop of Sar- 
dica, who was born in 1794, began at the 



22 PR A YER 

age of twenty-six years to heal the sick. 
And Father Mathew was so successful in re- 
lieving pain that after his death multitudes vis- 
ited his grave, many of whom were helped and 
left their crutches there. Every one has heard 
of the cures which were effected at the chapel of 
Knock, in Ireland, and at Lourdes, in France, 
where the Virgin Mary is believed to have re- 
vealed herself to a peasant girl in 1858, and of 
recent years in a chapel at Montreal, Canada. 
At all of these places the inevitable pile of 
crutches attests the faith of the pilgrims. 






Within the last twenty years there has been 
another type. It is a body, or rather a series 
of bodies, known by the name of M Christian 
Science." These bodies do not dwell in peace 
with one another, and it is not just to attribute 
the views of one school to the members of an- 
other school; but the following statement of 
one of their teachers may be taken as substan- 
tially true of all the schools. " God is su- 
preme; is mind; is principle, not personal; 
includes all, and is reflected by all that is 
eternal; is spirit, and spirit is infinite; is the 



CLAIMS OF SUPERNATURAL POWER 23 

only substance; is the only life; man was 
and is the idea of God. Therefore, mind 
can never be in man; divine science shows 
that matter and mortal body are the illu- 
sions of human belief, which seem to appear 
and disappear to mortal sense alone. When 
this belief changes, as in dreams, the ma- 
terial body changes with it, going wherever 
we wish and becoming whatever we may 
decree. * * * Anatomy, physiology, 
treatises on health, sustained by what is termed 
1 material law,' are the husbandmen of sickness 
and disease. * * * Because the muscles 
of the blacksmith's arm are strongly developed, 
it does not follow that exercise did it, or that 
an arm less used must be fragile. * * * If 
you believed in inflamed or weak nerves, you 
are liable to an attack from that source. You 
call it neuralgia; but I call it illusion. * * * 
When treating the sick, first make your plea 
in behalf of harmony. * * * Then realize 
the absence of disease. * * * Use such 
powerful language as a congressman would 
employ to defeat the passage of an inhuman 
law." 

This statement is not true of all types of 



24 PRA YER 

Christian Science. One holds that M it is not 
necessary to deny either the personality or the 
persistent individuality of the human spirit." 
This also adds, very sensibly, but in apparent 
violation of the doctrine of Christian Science, 
11 It is not necessary to tell a man dying of 
consumption that he is not sick, for that is not 
true."* 



Another type of these claimants to super- 
natural power is for the day represented in 
that mysterious individual, Schlatter, whose 
cures in the state of Colorado have been so 
widely published. A cousin of his is at this 
time operating in an adjacent state, while, in 
Chi' i young man named Gregoriwitsch 

has been giving exhibitions of his curative 
powers. 

The last type to be mentioned is made up 



* For these quotations, as well as for many instances 
cited hereafter, I am indebted to Dr. J. M. Buckley, 
of New York, whose careful treatise on " Faith Heal- 
ing, Christian Science and Kindred Phenomena," deals 
with these various claimants to supernatural power on 
grounds which are at once scientific, philosophical and 
Scriptural. 



CLAIMS OF SUPERNA TURAL POWER 25 

of men who have begun their careers as minis- 
ters of the Gospel, holding the evangelical 
faith. Their views upon God and Christ and 
the atonement do not vary greatly from those 
held in the Church Universal, but as soon as 
they pass beyond these fundamental themes, 
and undertake to deal with disease, they show 
that for practical purposes they must be 
classed along with those I have described 
above rather than with the great body of the 
Christian Church; and that a wall of partition 
divides them off from the Christian Church, 
which is higher and broader than any of the 
walls which divide the various branches of the 
Church of Christ from one another. 

All the great centers of English and Ameri- 
can life have representatives of this type of 
claimants. In London, an institution known 
as " Bethshan " reported wonderful cures a 
few years ago; " Old Orchard," Maine, has ac- 
quired a reputation second only to Lourdes or 
the chapel of Knock, by reason of the results 
of the efforts of a Boston representative of this 
type; in New York City, remarkable results 
are claimed in the " Homes " of the " Chris- 
tian Alliance "; while Chicago has three or four 



26 PR A YER 

establishments under one control all of which 
are called " Zion's Tabernacles." This type is 
very careful about the title given to it, but 
its different representatives would perhaps all 
agree to be classed as practising M divine heal- 
ing. " A recent issue of one of the numerous 
publications of this type contains a statement 
of " God's way of healing," in which it is said 
that this is " a person and not a thing; that the 
Lord Jesus Christ is still the healer; and that 
4 divine healing' rests on Christ's atonement. M 
Understood in their historic these 

principles will be readily agreed to through- 
out the Christian world. The statement, how- 
ever, proceeds to the very dangerous position 
that 'disease can never be God's will, that 
the gifts of healing are permanent, and that 
the four methods of " divine healing" are, the 
direct prayer of faith, the intercessory prayer 
of two or more, the anointing of elders with the 
prayer of faith, and the laying on of hands of 
those who believe and whom God has pre- 
pared and called to that ministry.' 

These various types are all in the most vio- 
lent antagonism. The " divine healer" just 



CLAIMS OF SUPERNATURAL POWER 27 

quoted concludes his statement by denouncing 
as " diabolical " all of his rivals, viz. : " Christ- 
ian Science, Mind-healing, Spiritualism and 
Trance-evangelism." These retaliate in like 
terms and " expose " the " divine healing" as 
a fraud and a humbug. Indeed, one need not 
go beyond this acute intestine controversy to 
find ample evidence on which to discredit these 
claimants one and all. They discredit one an- 
other far more effectively than one unversed in 
their peculiar methods could hope to do. 

This is true not only of the different types, 
but of the members of the same type. Dr. 
Buckley reports an experience of his with a 
somewhat famous Dr. N., who had healed a 
Dr. B. of a malignant disease, and had em- 
ployed him as his amanuensis for a time. 
When, however, B. left N. and set up in oppo- 
sition to him, N. instantly denounced him as 
an unmitigated fraud, who had no genuine 
healing power; and accounted for his cures on 
the ground that they were caused by the faith 
of the people and the concentration of their 
minds upon his operations, with the expecta- 
tion of being cured. When he was asked, 
however, if it was not in this manner that he 



28 PR A YER 

performed his works, he said, " Oh, no; the 
difference v between a genuine healer and a 
quack, like B., is as wide as the poles." 
This same N. was obliged to confess with re- 
gard to his daughter, whom he had taken to 
Havana, hoping the climate would benefit her, 
u It seems as if we can not always affect our 
own kindred." 



points of Cikeness Ctmong tEfycsc Cypes. 

In spite of all their differences, however, 
and their dissensions, it is quite possible to 
unify these different types into one class with 
well-defined characteristics. This has not 
been done to any large extent for the reason 
that it has been felt needful to deal with each 
type by itself. And, if the purpose in view 
were to reclaim to sane views of health and 
religion the believers in any one of these 
theories, it would be necessary patiently to 
deal with its peculiarities. Such a purpose, 
however worthy, is secondary to the larger 
purpose of protecting Christian people from 
the influence of these views, one and all. With 
this in view, the individual peculiarities may 
be passed by and attention fixed upon those 
points in which these various claims of super- 
natural power are at one. Among these are: 



30 PR A YER 

Their Rejection of Remedial Agencies. 
They all confessedly stand together on this 
basis. Had any one of them been charged 
with the cure of Hezekiah, he would have 
waved away the lump of figs and proclaimed 
his ability to effect a cure by his own private 
method, which might be a prayer alone, or a 
manipulation of a handkerchief he had blessed, 
or a solemn gaze into empty space. 

In this, they all alike array themselves 
against the divinely appointed order of the 
world. They make the healing of disease a 
process entirely out of harmony with other 
processes of nature. They wrench it out of 
relation to the ordinary methods of daily life. 
For every other end which these healers of 
disease may have in view, they are very ready 
to employ the means sanctioned by experience; 
but when suffering is to be relieved and disease 
is to be cured, they turn from the teachings of 
experience and from the remedial agencies 
which God has always blessed. In their con- 
tempt for these agencies they tear away, with 
great dramatic effect, the bandages which med- 
ical skill has wrapped around open wounds; 
they take the crutches of the cripple to hang 



POINTS OF LIKENESS AMONG TYPES 31 

them as trophies upon their walls; and they 
excite the victim of sore disease until in his 
imagination he thinks himself well. These 
they point to as evidences that remedial agen- 
cies are valueless. God's law, they assert, is 
against human sickness, and sickness can be 
cured by bringing the patient into harmony 
with that law. Yet they deal in the rational 
way with human hunger and human poverty, 
which are as much " against " God's laws as 
human sickness. They do not refuse to 
eat the bread which God has graciously pro- 
vided as the means of relieving hunger, nor 
do they decline the warm clothing which 
God has also provided as the means of pro- 
tection against suffering. The use of means 
for the cure of disease involves no more un- 
faith in God than the use of means to pro- 
mote the other ends of daily life, and none 
are more quick to employ all these means 
than these various claimants of supernatural 
power. They use means to advertise them- 
selves such as books, periodicals and pam- 
phlets, which they circulate by business meth- 
ods, and with the most persistent energy. 
They use means to confirm themselves in their 



32 PR A YER 






powers by piling up their collections of crutches 
and bandages and splints, accumulating photo- 
graphs of persons cured, with glowing testi- 
monials as to the efficacy of the cure. They 
use the means of worldly support also, 
whether these come in the way of fixed fees, 
or of what some of them call " free will offer- 
ings for the Lord's work"; and these funds 
they invest in real estate and other substantial 
forms of security. In all of these particulars 
they are as shrewd and worldly-wise as the 
vendor of any patent medicine, or the mer- 
chant in any line of business. Their distrust 
of physicians, their contempt of nursing, and 

their defiance of tin; laws of medication con- 
stitute a solitary exo ption to their use of 
means in the prosecution of their work. 

The identity of their cures. Their cures are 
often real. It is a waste of time and a sacri- 
fice of sense to deny this. These cures include 
such diseases as paralysis, convulsions, tumors, 
spinal disease, rheumatism and neuralgia, with 
occasional instances of lost hearing or 
sight. Each type, of course, claims that its 



POINTS OF LIKEXESS AMONG TYPES 33 

cures are peculiar and distinctive; but an ex- 
amination of these will show that one type 
possesses no advantage over any other. They 
cover the same range of diseases, and they 
accomplish about the same general result. 

The influence which any one of these 
methods of healing acquires arises out of its 
success in fixing attention upon its own line of 
results to the exclusion of the results of its 
rivals. Each method develops in its disciples 
a very pronounced partizanship which leads 
them to discredit every other method, and to 
believe that it has about it something miracu- 
lous and hitherto unheard of. But if one will 
pass under review in succession the line of re- 
sults presented by each of these methods, he 
will be struck by the likeness they sustain to 
one another and a common origin for them all 
will be suggested to him. 

The character of their testimonials. The 
disciples, like the healers, are in most cases 
sincere men and women, who verily believe 
that their cures are due to miraculous agencies. 
Their testimonials accordingly express the 



34 PR A YER 

deep convictions of relief and gratitude which 
they feel that these agencies have been invoked 
in their behalf. It would be not only a 
waste of time, but a most ungracious task to 
question the sincerity with which these testi- 
monials are written. Each type, of course, 
claims that its distinctive testimonials are in- 
vincible, and ought to produce conviction in 
the minds of all candid investigators. The 
difficulty with the testimony, however, IS not 
that it fails to prove, but that it proves entirely 
too much. Christian scientists prove their 
claims by their testimonials and divine healers 
proves their claims by their testimonials, and 
Schlatter proves his claims by his testimonials. 
The testimony in any one case is quite as good 
as in any other; and when we have it all before 
us we are just as far from knowing which is 
the true and the only method of healing as we 
were at the beginning. Furthermore, this 
testimony simply puts these methods of heal- 
ing on the same level with the various patent- 
medicines of which the world is so full. None 
of them can produce a richer or more varied 
or more wonderful series of testimonials than 
some of the time-honored patent-medicines. 



POINTS OF LIKENESS AMONG TYPES 33 

Indeed, we might substitute in any of these 
testimonials as to healing the name of some 
patent-medicine, and find that it would read 
quite as well as a testimonial to the efficacy 
of the medicine. They are couched in the 
same extravagant language, and they recite 
the same marvelous cures, and express the 
same deathless gratitude to the particular 
agency to which they attribute their cure. 

These points are sufficient to show wherein 
these different and antagonistic claimants to 
supernatural power in the healing of disease 
stand together, and wherein they may fairly be 
treated as belonging to one class. 



(Explanation of TTljctr (Cures, 

That these cures are real ought to be freely 
conceded; that the explanations which the 
healers give of the cures are correct must be 
emphatically denied. It is a principle of sound 
philosophy as well as of true religion that 
while God is present in all His works, and His 
personal agency is in the world, the presump- 
tion is always that God acts in accordance with 
the laws which He has established. This pre- 
sumption is overthrown only when those laws 
fail to account for the facts. It is a mark of 
barbaric superstition to invoke the divine 
agency at every point, and to inveigh against 
those who seek to inquire candidly and re\ 
ently into the truth of any claim to divine 
power. Upon this principle, the cures wrought 
by these healers must be carefully examined; 
and when so examined, it will be found that 
they are accounted for by: 



EXPLANA TION OF THEIR CURES 37 

The healing power of nature, technically 
called vis medicatrix naturae. All candid 
physicians confess that they rely more upon this 
than they do upon their own wisdom or their 
medicines; and they administer their medicines 
very often not to heal but to let nature heal. 
This healing" power of nature is frequently ex- 
hibited in that dread disease, consumption. 
The late Prof. Austin Flint, of New York, in 
his clinical report on consumption, describes 
sixty-two cases in which an arrest of the dis- 
ease took place. In seven of these cases the 
arrest took place without any special medical 
or hygienic treatment; and in four of the 
seven, recovery was complete. Prof. Ben- 
nett, of the Royal Infirmary, at Edinburgh, 
says that morbid anatomy has demonstrated 
that tuberculosis or consumption in the 
early state degenerates and becomes abortive, 
with extreme frequency, in the proportion of 
one-third to one-half of all the incurables who 
die over forty, and the Louden Lancet en- 
dorses this conclusion. 

Before the claim to miraculous power in the 
cure of disease can be conceded to any or all 
of these healers, they must be able to show 



38 PR A YER 






that this healing power of nature has not 
been at work. This is illustrated in the case 
of a lad sadly afflicted with curvature of the 
spine. He was placed in a plaster cast and 
the healing process was, by the testimony of 
his physician, practically completed. Out of 
abundant caution the plaster cast was not re- 
moved at once; and, the lad becoming impa- 
tient, his friends placed him under the care of 
one of these healers, who at once broke the 
cast, ordered the lad to stand up and pro- 
nounced him cured by miraculous power. And 
the lad, with many of his friends, was firmly 
convinced that he was cured, not by the heal- 
ing power of nature, but by the agency of the 
" divine healer." This healing power of nature 
is so entirely unknown to many credulous per- 
sons, that, if they come under the influence of 
any one of these methods of healing, and are 
benefited at all during that period, they are 
almost forced to concede its claims to mira- 
culous power. 

The pozver of concentrated ' attention, whether 
it be called faith or will power. 



EXPLANATION OF THEIR CURES 39 

This is recognized in all medical practice. 
At the seige of Breda, in 1625, scurvy pre- 
vailed to such an extent that the Prince of 
Orange was about to capitulate. Three small 
bottles of medicine were given to each physi- 
cian, which did not contain enough for the re- 
covery of two patients; and it was oracularly 
announced that three or four drops from one 
of these vials was sufficient to impart a healing 
virtue to a gallon of liquor. The effect was 
astonishing. Many recovered quickly and 
perfectly; and men who had not moved their 
limbs for a month walked the streets in perfect 
health. 

The efficacy of the touch of a king to cure 
scrofula is authenticated beyond question, says 
Dr. Buckley. Charles II. touched nearly a 
hundred thousand people. James, in one of 
his journeys, touched eight hundred persons. 
And when William III. refused to exercise this 
power, it brought upon him an avalanche of 
tears from parents of children who were suffer- 
ing from this disease. 

An eminent practitioner in this country re- 
ported several years ago his experiments in this 
direction. He was approached by a lady, a 



40 PR A YER 

devout Catholic, who needed treatment and 
desired to try the waters of Lourdes in 
France, which has been mentioned as one of 
the holy places at which cures were wrought. 
The physician told her — what was true — that 
he had a vial of that water, and that he was 
perfectly willing to give her son>e of it. But 
he asked her as a favor if she would try an- 
other water which he had found efficacious for 
various ailments, and which he called Aqua 
Cro fonts. In New York this means common 
hydrant water. Not being versed in medical 
terms or in the sources of the water supply of 
the city, the lady consented to try the famous 
Aqua Crotonis* The practitioner tool; a bot- 
tle, labeled it Aqua Crotouis, put into it 
some of the water of Lourdes, and told 
the lady to use it for a week and report 
the results to him. She faithfully followed 
the directions, not knowing that it was the 
water of Lourdes she was using, and at the 
end of the week she reported to the doctor 
that the Aqua Crotonis had done her no 
good. The physician then labeled a bottle 
Water of Lourdes, put into it some com- 
mon hydrant water and gave it to his very 






EXPLANATION OF THEIR CURES 41 

devout patient. In a week she returned en- 
tirely restored by the efficacy of this wonderful 
water and confirmed in her faith in the healing 
power of the virgin of Lourdes. 

Dr. Dixon, of Brooklyn, relates a case, for 
which, however, he does not vouch, in which 
this will power or imagination produced not 
life, but death. A criminal was under sen- 
tence of death, and some physicians obtained 
permission to try the effect of mind upon body. 
They informed the criminal that they were or- 
dered to bleed him to death in his cell, and 
save him from the disgrace of a public execu- 
tion. He readily consented and was blind- 
folded. The physician pierced his arm with 
a lance, and poured warm water over it from 
a basin so that the prisoner could distinctly hear 
the water drip, but could not see the nature 
of the wound. He received the impression 
that the dripping water was his life blood 
pouring out. After awhile one of the physi- 
cians said, " He will live five minutes," " four 
minutes," " three minutes," "two minutes," 
" one minute," " half a minute," " fifteen sec- 
onds," and when the time expired the man was 
dead. 



42 PR A YER 

If physicians were only willing to speak out 
they could tell of many prescriptions of rose 
water and bread pills, which are administered 
with a view not of affecting the physical con- 
dition, but simply the faith or will power of 
the patient. It is a perfectly legitimate 
method of treatment. And if these various 
types of healers were only willing to put them- 
selves on a level with our physicians in their 
use of these devices, they would free them- 
selves from the charge <>f imposture, in their 
use of powers which medical practice lias al- 
ways recognized, and at the same time render 
immense service to humanity. 






Exaggerations of human testimony. There 
is no more unreliable witness than he who 
attempts to describe his own physical con- 
dition. His testimony is almost irresistibly 

in the line of his favorite belief. And 
when a cold-blooded and disinterested out- 
sider passes upon this testimony he is forced, 
without any discredit to the sincerity of 
the witness, to reject the larger portion of it. 
This is even true of physicians themselves. 



EXPLANATION OF THEIR CURES 43 

Not many years ago one died from what he 
supposed to be consumption. But the post- 
mortem examination showed that his lungs 
were perfectly sound, and that his death re- 
sulted from disease caused by the quantities of 
1 and stimulants he had taken to ward off 
the disease. A famous female evangelist, 
whose cure has attracted great attention, re- 
fused to mention a surgical operation by which 
her friends know r she was greatly benefited, 
because, she said, she did not wish to divert 
attention from the great work that God had 
really wrought in her. 

When one definitely places himself under 
the influence of any one of these methods of 
healing, he is disposed very naturally to justify 
himself by justifying the method. Hence, his 
testimony is liable to error as to his condition 
previous to his cure, which he will present as 
most dangerous; as to the results of the cure, 
which he will take at the highest possible 
value; and as to his present state, which, if 
favorable, he will attribute to the continuing 
effects of the cure. Little credence can be 
given to the testimony of men exposed to such 
temptations as these. 



44 PR A YER 

TJie Silence as to Failures. — This is one 
of the saddest aspects of the work of these 
healers. They verge upon heartlessness as 
they vainly endeavor to explain away their 
failures and the relapses of their patients, for 
they visit the failure of their method upon the 
unfortunate victim of that method. 

Lord Gardenstone, a learned Englishman, 
spent a great deal of time inquiring for those 
persons who had actually attested marvelous 
cures, and found that more than two-thirds of 
the number died very shortly after they had 
been cured. If the healers as frank in 

their pracl 'ii" physicians are, we would 

be better able timate their results; but, 

with their avoidance of all n to deaths, 

relapses and failures, it is impossible to give 
any opinion favorable to their methods, while 
the train of darkened homes and broken lives 
points to their gross incompetency, and to the 
baselessness of their claims. 



£fye Difference Betnxen Cfyese (Lures 
anb miraculous Cures. 

The fact of these cures has been admitted 
and an adequate explanation upon natural 
grounds has been advanced. It remains, how- 
ever, to point out wherein the claim of special 
supernatural power, made on the ground of 
these cures, must be denied. 

First. If these healers exercise supernatu- 
ral power, our physicians are endowed with 
the same. It is, of course, easy for a healer to 
say that he does his works by the power of God, 
and that his opponents work by the power 
of the devil. But as each healer makes the 
same claim for himself, we are just as far from 
determining which is the work of God and 
which is the work of the devil as before we 
listened to their claims. The most effective 
expose of spiritualism is that given by prestidigi- 
tateurs like Hermann, who is able to duplicate 
the curious tricks of spiritualists, by sleight-of- 



46 PR A YER 

hand and without aid from the spirits. So 
when our physicians, many of them irreligious 
men, are able to parallel the cures wrought by 
the healers, it goes to show that the healer 
simply used the same natural forces which 
the physican used. The difference is that 
the physician confesses that it is but a natural 
force, while the healer claims some marvelous 
agency behind it. Sober-minded men who 
reverently recognize God's supernatural power 
in human life are not to be deterred from ex- 
posing shams by the fear of the charge of 
Atheism. They recall the admoniti* n of the 
loving yet discriminating John, "Beloved, be- 
lieve not every spirit, but try the spirits whether 
they are of God: because many false prophets 
are gone out into the world." 

Second. These methods fail to accomplish 
cures which would require a supernatural or 
miraculous agency. There is not one in- 
stance upon record in which these healers 
gave sight to a man born blind nor one in 
which they have restored a limb which has 
been amputated, nor one in which they have 



THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CURES 47 

given an idiot his senses, or restored a lunatic 
to sanity, nor one in which they have raised 
the dead to life again. If they stood upon the 
basis of our ordinary medical practice, this 
would be no discredit to them. Every candid 
physician is free to confess the failure of his 
methods and the limitations which environ his 
processes. But it is different with one who 
claims supernatural power. There is no limit 
to divine power. There is nothing which the 
arm of God cannot do. And therefore if these 
healers be invested with divine power, they 
must accomplish results w r hich cannot be 
explained upon natural grounds; and their fail- 
ure to do so convicts them either of a wilful 
ignorance or else of the deepest insincerity. 
There is no escape from this dilemma. 

TJiird. The miracles of Christ and the 
apostles as manifestations of divine power, 
stand out in clear contrast with the works of 
these healers. These miracles consisted in 
raising the dead such as Lazarus and the son 
of the widow of Nain, in restoring sight to 
men born blind, and hearing to the deaf. 



48 PR A YER 

The last miracle which our Lord wrought 
before his death was when Peter had drawn his 
sword and cut off the ear of the servant of the 
High Priest. The great Physician simply 
touched the ear, and it was made whole as the 
other. We look in vain among modern healers 
for any parallel to these miracles. 

Further, in Christ's miracles, there was no 
purpose of display, no collection of trophies, 
no angry denunciation of rivals, do jealousy, 
no bitterness, no rancor. His miracles were 
wrought for the purpose of establishing His 
claims in connection with the spiritual ends 
which He had in view. The gratification 
of curiosity, or even the relief of suffering 
were not in themselves sufficient to induce 
Him to exert this power. And besides all the 
miracles of Christ and His apostles were 
free from the suspicion of money-getting. 
When Simon Magus came to the apostles to 
purchase the gift of the Holy Ghost, they were 
horrified, and turned from him, saying, " Thy 
money perish with thee." Unfortunately the 
odor of money lingers strong around these 
modern healings. With the exception of the 
Colorado healer Schlatter, I know of no one 



THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CURES 49 

of them who refuses money, and none will tell 
the amounts which pass into their treasuries as 
so-called "freewill offerings." What a con- 
trast to the miracles of the Master! What a 
contrast also to the methods of the Christian 
Church which, while it lays upon its members 
the duty of maintaining God's ordinances, 
accounts for every cent received and explains 
every disbursement made! 



(Effect of tCfycsc Claims. 

The sad results which attend these various 
claims to healing are only too well known. 

Error in itself is mischievous, and if I have 
correctly stated the case these various methods 
of healing are permeated with error. Neither 
a sound philosophy nor an established science 
nor a spiritual religion can tolerate any one of 
them. Christian science with its doctrine that 
that there is no such thing as disease, and the 
divine healer with his doctrine that disease 
can never be God's will, set themselves not 
only against the appointed forces of the intel- 
ligent and civilized world, but also against his- 
toric Christianity. As far as their views spread, 
just so far they do damage to the cause of civil- 
ization and Christianity. Phrases and prayers 
cannot conceal the dangerous heresies of these 
healers. They separate themselves alike from 
all branches of the Christian Church and from 
all the fo/ces of our modern civilized life, 



EFFECT OF THESE CLAIMS 51 

by a wall which can never be broken, save 
as they come to sane and wise views of health 
arid religion. 



The sufferings caused by the belief in these 
views are sometimes pathetic. When Bishop 
William Taylor, of Africa, was in the midst of 
his work, he had with him a young man who 
fanatically refused to take any medicine, and 
died a martyr to the superstition which he 
mistook for faith. The last entry he made in 
his diary was, " I haven't a fever but a weak 
feeling; but I take the promise, ' He giveth 
power to the faint/ and I do receive the fact." 
The testimony of his medical adviser is: 
" Charlie, your temperature is 105, and pulse 
130; normal is 98; the dividing line between 
life and death is 103. You are now dying; it 
is only a question of time, and if you don't 
take something to break up this fever it will 
surely kill you." To which the poor mis- 
guided youth replied, M Well, then, I will die, 
for I won't take any medicine." And he died 
convinced that his faith in his theory of dis- 
ease was faith in God Himself. 



52 PR A YER 

For sixty years or more there has lived not 
far away a woman whose life was full of the 
joy and sunshine of the Christian hope as that 
hope is expressed in the faith of the Methodist 
church. Jesus was her Saviour and her Lord, 
and her hope in Him led her to a consistent 
and useful life in her church. Within a few 
years she became afflicted with a dropsical af- 
fection, which medical skill found to be incur- 
able. With that desperation which is willing 
to try anything, she put herself under the in- 
fluence of a " divine healer," and went to his 

ablishment for treatment. The usual creed 
was announced to her that disease can not be 
God's will, and that God is willing to heal 
every one who has faith enough, that ti 
prayer leaves out " if it be possible,"* and ex- 
pects immediate restoration, and that if she 
was not restored it was proof that she had not 



•" There has arisen of late a professed teacher of 
"divine healing," who is said to urge his hearers 
that true prayer leaves out the "ifs." It is difficult 
to credit the statement concerning one who calls 
himself, even in a general way, a Christian. To him 
the agonies of Gethsemane must be meaningless, for 
the Son of God offered His unanswered prayer, M Oh, 
My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; 
nevertheless, not My will, hut Thine be done." — From 
the Study on Unanswered Prayer, 



EFFECT OF THESE CLAIMS 53 

faith enough. The suffering disciple entered 
upon this fearful test. Day by day she prayed 
and watched, and as her disease grew 
worse, her fears arose, not for her physical 
health, but for her spiritual safety. She had 
never before doubted her acceptance in the 
Lord, but if her physical condition was an in- 
dex to her spiritual state, what must her state 
be ? The sunshine went out of her soul and 
she wandered in spiritual darkness, while day 
by day the cruel test was held over her head, 
u You can be healed if you have faith enough." 
Her mind began to give way and her friends 
insisted on removing her to her home. Within 
a few day after she was stricken with apoplexy, 
and to-day she lingers in great pain from her 
disease and w r ith a mind enfeebled by the 
awful strain through which she passed. Her 
sun is going down in darkness, yet when the 
gracious Master whom she served for so many 
years gathers his distressed disciple to Himself 
He will show her that faith in Him is not 
to be tested by one's physical condition, but 
by the love and joy and reverence we feel for 
Him and by our readiness to suffer His right- 
eous will. 



54 PR A YER 

The daily papers are full of cases in which 
parents have refused treatment to their child- 
ren for diphtheria and scarlet fever and broken 
limbs, on the idea that they would be cured 
either by Christian Science or divine healing or 
some other miraculous method. Who can 
tell the length and depth of the misery caused 
by this defiance of the established laws of 
health ? 



These views make shipwreck of home, of 
fortune and of religion. Once possessed by 
any one of them, the claims of husband, wife, 
children, father, mother seem as naught; and 
the earthly tie established by God is broken 
up. Cases are frequent in which men and 
women literally have impoverished themselves 
in obedience to their teachers. One of them 
not long ago reported with great joy a collec- 
tion taken up at a meeting in Maine, amount- 
ing to a hundred thousand dollars, for what 
was called foreign missions, when men and 
women fell over one another in their eager- 
ness to give their money and jewels and even 
deeds conveying their real property. The 



EFFECT OF THESE CLAIMS 55 

work of foreign missions must surely suffer 
from such perverted claims as these. But 
the worst shipwrecks are those which are 
wrought in the faith and in the religious life. 
The delusion can not last always, and the 
awakening is sometimes perilous. God and 
Christ have been so closely interwoven with 
the claims of the healer that when the healer 
is repudiated, there is imminent danger that 
God and Christ will in like manner be lost to 
that soul. From this catastrophe Christian 
teachers would save the deluded. 



Our attitude towards these misguided men 
and women should be one of kindness and of 
patience. Many of them have been great 
sufferers, ready to lay hold of anything that 
promised relief. More of them still are ignor- 
ant men and women, untrained in the 
methods of real cure. It is impossible to 
argue with them, for the beliefs which they 
hold are beyond an intelligent statement. 
And it is generally impossible to break by 
reasoning the infatuation in which they are 



56 PR A YER 



3^9S 



held. We can only wait until they wake and. 
strive as far as we may to shield them "from 
the force of that awakening and to save them 
from making shipwreck of home, of fortune 
and of religion as well as of health. 



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